On March 21 I got a panicked phone call from my mother. Hearing her even but obviously aggrieved tone I couldn’t help but think of those movie scenes in which policemen solemnly approach the door of a death victim’s family. “Lindsey— it passed 219 to 212.”
She was talking about the passage of the health care bill and the dire police scene wasn’t too far off base. To her in light of this legislative revolution America might as well have been dead.
My mom has always been a staunch Republican and her concerns about health care reform obviously echo those of the rest of her company on the far right. But while I’m no proponent of the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of the world I do think there are rational arguments underlying the conservative base that are too frequently overshadowed by those radical often dangerous icons of the Republican Party.
Don’t get me wrong— my own ideologies contrast starkly with my mother’s in many ways. Our conflicting views on social issues especially indicate a glaring generational gap. Still though one thing that makes perfect sense to me regarding her political convictions is fiscal conservatism. She and my father have worked hard to maintain comfortable occupancy in the middle class; the government’s hand in their bank account for better or for worse is unwelcome. Unfortunately for them their say in the matter is getting softer every day.
The U.S. government defines the middle class as those whose incomes range from $44000 to $88000 for a family of four. Born and raised in that monetary bracket I was taught to be proud of what I have and work hard to achieve more. But with a new Robin Hood-style health care package that essentially takes from the rich and gives to the poor that maxim no longer seems to hold much weight.
Upper-class citizens though ultimately funding health care for 32 million uninsured Americans will be OK— increased financial burden from the government will be virtually inconspicuous in their enormous wallets. Members of the working class will be better than ever reaping health care benefits that were never before available to them and at the expense of others: a true Rawlsian utopia.
But what about the middle class? The social science dependency theory posits that political systems are designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor; it conveniently excludes any sort of postulation about those who do not embody either extreme. Sandwiched in an indissoluble stasis between two classes ever battling for their democratic rights the middle class is a sitting duck for government manipulation.
And right on cue the new health care legislation will require middle-class Americans to pay premiums almost equivalent to those of upper-class citizens so that enough taxes are accumulated to cover low-income families and individuals.
My problem with health care reform isn’t its fundamental skeleton that so blatantly favors one economic class— I realize there’s much more to it than that and even acknowledge many of its benefits. No my problem with the new law is that when my mother who has done nothing but work to ensure security for her and her family expresses disdain for the passage of a law that ultimately disregards that industry she’ll be written off as another right-wing nut bitter about the country’s recent shift toward liberal thinking.
There’s no use fighting the Democratic hold on Washington— it’s an upstream swim and movements such as the health care law will be inevitable during the next few years. So I’ll let the Republican radicals dabble in the tea industry. I’ll let the Obama “revolution” take effect. As Marx turns over in his grave I’ll let the upper and working classes play tug-of-war with government subsidies.
But in the meantime this one goes out to my mom— and every other member of the middle class and even broader group of Americans who reject the liberal tide on some legitimately justifiable grounds— because very quickly indeed they’re becoming one of those silenced marginalized societies that for so long the democratic system attempted to combat. After all “socialized medicine” or not America is still a democracy.
